Peter McFeely

Jen busied herself doing nothing with her phone, pretending to thumb through Instagram but keeping her eyes trained on Darryl. His jaw clenched and unclenched, teeth grinding together while his doughy checks pulsed a knotty tension which seeped into the two foot vacuum between their bodies. The whole point of coming to the bar was to escape the silence at home but now the band was playing melancholy music. He felt like they were goading him, had spotted he and Jen’s distant body language from the stage and were turning their attention from a drunken brawl between youths to trying to provoke a marital breakdown as the next instalment of the evening’s entertainment. It seemed to demand a response but Darryl kept his eyes trained on his phone. He read the headlines, slowly sliding the text up the screen. He made a demonstration of ingesting every word. His eyes scanned each clump of pixels forming a letter, but he read little of the manifestations. His mind raced over and over. Replaying the events of last evening. He challenged his tongue to form the sounds which would convey his feelings to Jen. But his tongue lay listless, like a soldier laying down arms, refusing to engage an unproven foe. He could not fire the first shot, lacking in evidence as he was. No matter what his instinct might say. Tongue unwilling to battle, his heart refused to participate in friendly exchange. He buried himself in his phone, unable to communicate with the woman he loved.

It wasn’t the latest Jen had stayed out. But she knew Darryl had not slept. After years together, it’s easy for a person to tell the state of their partner based solely on the sound of their breathing. Not only asleep or awake, but the depth of sleep; the type of dream even. When she edged the door open, easing the handle round so that it did not snap back into place, she instantly heard the sharp nasal inhalations of an idling engine. He lay with his back to her, knees tucked up and covers pulled too tightly to his neck. In one movement, Jen pulled off her jeans and panties, burying the latter deep in the laundry basket along with the bra unhooked from under her top. She padded into the bathroom, playing along so as not to ‘wake’ her husband. She inspected herself in front of the mirror. Standing naked but for a t-shirt with cropped sleeves and a dipping neckline, she pushed the hair back from her face. She had cut it short recently. The trimmed pubic hair had been maintained since before their marriage. Jen was a pretty woman. Often it was said, for her age. But that was irrelevant. Her thighs and bum had not given way to cellulose and she confirmed as much as she half-pirouetted on a pointed toe. The new hair suited her. It highlighted her high cheekbones and large, almond eyes. Jen looked deep into the glass for a moment too long. Her hands came up quickly, fingers and thumbs angled as if mimicking a gun, the barrel of which was drawn under and through the blinking eyes. She caught a small choke and the heel of her hand squeezed into the hollow between cheekbone and eyebrow. Noisily, Jen cleaned her teeth and scraped away the make-up, blotting the trickling mascara with a circle of cotton. Without peeing, she wiped herself and flushed the toilet. She deposited the t-shirt in the laundry basket and slipped under the covers. “Sorry – didn’t mean to wake you” she said, the syllables sloshing together. Darryl stirred and mumbled an unintelligible noise before settling back into his prone curve. Jen lay on her back, listening to her husband’s breathing. Still awake. Why, tonight, had he been waiting for her? She was considering her worst fears when darkness took her and she drifted to sleep.

Jen had another work event. Ever since he had known her, Jen had to set aside time to frequent cocktail parties, buildings which opened and ceremonies which closed. It was part of her profession and he accepted that, as she accepted the irregular hours caused by the projects his firm assigned him. As the years passed, each developed more influence in the workplace and were more able to pick and choose the hours they worked. By now, Darryl was nearly a completely regular 9-5 guy. Jen had also tapered down the number of late nights. They never quite went away but recently she seemed to attack them with added vigour. Where previously he may have had to sit through blow-by-blow accounts of a drinks event with 20 insalubrious men twice her age, she was now less forthcoming with information and seemingly happier to attend such soirees. Her hair had changed and the lapsed gym membership was renewed. She looked good for it. Darryl should have been pleased but he couldn’t help but question who it was for. He had always been happy with her physical appearance – it couldn’t have been for him. He told himself that it was for Jen. That she was at a point in her life where she wanted to reassert herself, to remind herself that she was not his wife, but her own powerful being. He had never tried to convince her of anything otherwise but he had read about hormones and life stages and other such things which were coloured with a smidgen of chauvinistic patronisation. Yet, there was something about Jen’s behaviour. She bubbled at the edges in the same manner which made him fall in love with her, but she seemed more distant. Preoccupied perhaps. Doubts and permutations filled the space in which trust should have resided. She left for work that morning, he was certain, with a hint more make-up and a higher pair of heels tucked in her handbag. He messaged her, asking how things were going. No reply. Again, telling her he loved her and would see her when she was home. Hours later, Don’t wait up. A second message followed, a solitary x, an afterthought to placate him he was convinced. Darryl paced the house. He browsed the TV until he found sport on the other side of the world, for which he could feign interest and use as an excuse for staying up later than usual. Past midnight and Jen was still not home. On the sports channel the country and ball changed. The room had grown dark as he fretted on the sofa. On the coffee table, reflecting the swerving bodies of the athletes, lay Jen’s iPad. Lifting it slowly, he tapped in her passcode. Either of them could have done so on any device in the household; they had no secrets. He chewed his lower lip, hovering over different icons. Hesitantly, he pressed down, but the screen was unresponsive at first, so clammy were his fingertips.

They hadn’t been to the bar together for quite some time. Jen wondered if this was Darryl finally trying to show her attention, to restore romance to the relationship. Faltering lights, sweating bodies and a crooning teen weren’t necessarily the most romantic ingredients, but at one time they were all things the couple had held dear. She placed her hand on Darryl’s arm and smiled as he looked up from the news she knew he hadn’t been reading. The touch was warm to Darryl’s skin, but he felt a current of ice shoot through the veins in his forearm. Right now, Jen was a paradox to him. She was beautiful, but he couldn’t look at her without seeing ugliness and betrayal. Her smile enlivened him but he felt his lungs tighten as he thought it was invoked by another. The day had been torture. Long drawn out silences and unspoken sentences. Jen had tread carefully through the house, more drinks than she could manage now that she wasn’t a 20-something party-girl, taking their toll physically but magnifying psychological demons and paranoia which gripped her. What did her husband know? What did he think? Darryl had suggested coming to the bar to escape the solitude. Two people in one room, each trapped in splendid isolation. The music was loud, the patrons louder and the drinks came with a punch. He dare not leave her, but at least he wouldn’t have to suffer the urge to fill the silence with questions. Jen squeezed the arm. She saw there was still tenderness in his eyes. She jerked her head towards the clearing of tables which served as the dance floor. “Want to dance?” Darryl followed the nod to a young couple hanging off each other, swaying in rhythms independent of each other, the music or indeed any discernible pattern. The whips of two sets of dyed hair blended and knotted, creating an explosion of colour draped over slobbering tongues and lips smacking and back and forth. Darryl sat transfixed for the time it took a laugh, emanating deep in his gut, to work through his digestive system and throw itself into the world. He leant back in the chair, convulsing. Jen giggled uncontrollably, her upper body hopping up and down like a pogo stick. The laughter peeled off in great strips; large rips and small tears. Eyes moistening, they grinned at each other like fools. “We were never that bad where we?” Jen said. Darryl’s laughs stacattoed. He sputtered like a car draining its tank. He felt the words rise up, fighting each other in his mouth.
“I love you.”
“Where were you?”
He didn’t hear which he said.

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